Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Doctor RJ, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Man Oh Man. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Interceptor7, BentLiberal, Oke and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
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Reuters
A powerful earthquake rocked northern Japan on Tuesday, briefly disrupting cooling functions at a nuclear plant and generating a tsunami that hit the same region devastated by a massive quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011.
The earthquake, which was felt in Tokyo, had a magnitude of 7.4, the Japan Meteorological Service said, and was centered off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of about 10 km (6 miles).
There were no reports of deaths or serious injuries several hours after the quake hit at 5:59 a.m. (2059 GMT Monday).
A tsunami of up to 1.4 meters (4.5 feet) had been observed around Sendai, about 70 km (45 miles) north of Fukushima, with smaller waves hitting ports elsewhere along the coast, public broadcaster NHK said.
Television footage showed ships moving out to sea from harbors as tsunami warning signals wailed, after warnings of waves of up to 3 meters (10 feet) were issued.
"We saw high waves but nothing that went over the tidal barriers," a man in the city of Iwaki told NTV television network.
US NEWS
McClatchy DC
The election of Donald Trump and the people he is choosing as advisers and cabinet members have brought renewed attention to one fan club that the president-elect has tried to distance himself from: The Ku Klux Klan.
Within 48 hours of the Trump win, the Loyal White Knights of Pelham posted plans on the group’s website for a celebratory parade on Dec. 3, though no time or location has been listed. “Victory Klavalkade Klan Parade Dec. 3rd 2016 North Carolina,” is all the site mentions about the event. “Trump = Trump’s Race United My People.”
Not only did the announcement bring condemnation from across the political spectrum, it raised questions about the state of the Klan in North Carolina, a battleground state for the presidential candidates.
Robin Hayes, chairman of the N.C. Republican Party, issued a statement condemning the “extremist ideology and associated actions in the strongest possible terms.”
“These acts and thought processes are no reflection of the heartbeat of this great country and are counter to the efforts to make America great again,” Hayes stated in a release issued three days after the election. “We stand with the Democratic Party in calling these out-of-state troublemakers to go home.”
But it’s not clear they are from out of state. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of hate groups around the country, has identified eight KKK groups and two white nationalist groups in North Carolina.
The Guardian
After the shock of Donald Trump’s presidential win wore off, it didn’t surprise me that one of the first things I saw women doing online was advising others to get IUDs as soon as possible. Anticipating the end of Obamacare, coverage for birth control, perhaps even abortion, a lot of women started to think about long-term contraception and talking about their options online. With social media, getting involved is easier than ever. And with Trump– the most overtly misogynist politician in history – in office, we have our work cut out for us. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are 10 things women can do that might ease our minds, and protect our rights.
- We all know that reproductive justice will be under the gun with Trump – and Pence, a well-known extremist on abortion rights – in office. Lots of people are already donating to Planned Parenthood, which is great. But we should also give some love – money and time – to independent abortion clinics and abortion funds (small grassroots orgs that raise money to help women afford their procedures).
- If you’re considering getting that IUD while your insurance carrier still covers it, now also might be a good time to stock up on Plan B, better known as the morning-after pill. It’s over the counter now, but that could change.
- Get a passport if you don’t already have one. This is especially important for trans people, because they are good for much longer than driver’s licenses and right now you can list your gender without having to provide proof, and don’t need to have your name legally changed.
Reuters
Police fired tear gas and water at hundreds of protesters in North Dakota opposed to an oil pipeline in freezing weather late Sunday and early Monday, in the latest violent clash between law enforcement and activists over the $3.7 billion project.
An estimated 400 protesters mounted the Backwater Bridge just north of Cannon Ball, North Dakota, and attempted to force their way past police in what the Morton County Sheriff's Department initially described as an "ongoing riot."
A joint statement from several activist groups said protesters were trying to remove the burned vehicles blocking Backwater Bridge in order to restore access to the nearby Standing Rock encampments so emergency services and local traffic can move freely.
Police fired volleys of tear gas at the protesters to prevent them from crossing the bridge. Law enforcement also sprayed protesters with water in sub-freezing temperatures, and fired rubber bullets, injuring some in the crowd.
“It is below freezing right now and the Morton County Sheriff’s Department is using a water cannon on our people - that is an excessive and potentially deadly use of force," said Dallas Goldtooth, a spokesman for the Indigenous Environmental Network, one of the organizations involved in protests.
Vox
You can think of Donald Trump’s administration as a three-legged stool. There’s the establishment represented in former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, there’s the “alt-right” in former senior counselor Steve Bannon, and then there’s a third, crucial support: the Trump leg, led by a 35-year-old with no experience in government, politics, or public policy.
That third leg includes the entire extended family, but it’s not led by any of his natural children. Instead, the head of the Trump faction of the Trump movement is a true kindred spirit: Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner.
Kushner was a crucial behind-the-scenes player in Trump’s campaign. He successfully purged Chris Christie and all of his allies from the Trump transition, and he now has risen so far in the ranks that he is reportedly attending daily intelligence briefings with Trump. There are talks underway to see if some exception to nepotism laws can be found to give him a formal role in the White House.
On the surface, Kushner seems remarkably unqualified for this weighty task. He has no experience in foreign policy or domestic policy or government, or really any political activity of any kind. But on another level, that makes Kushner the perfect Trumpnik. Here is a high-ranking official in the emerging regime hierarchy who has no conceivable reason to be there other than personal loyalty to the Trump family. He has no base of support beyond the Trumps and no conceivable political role in any other administration.
Salon
One of the odder events of 2016’s very odd presidential campaign was Donald Trump’s pilgrimage to an event held by the Republican Hindu Coalition in Edison, New Jersey, during the last weeks of the presidential campaign. It’s not as if he made other forms of outreach to small ethnic or religious minorities, and this event seemed like a particularly obscure one for a campaign concentrated on big rallies in battleground states.
Well, we may know the primary reason now: It was revealed over the weekend that the president-elect has been holding Trump Organization business meetings during the transition, and one of his meetings was with Indian developers with whom he has some luxury apartment deals cooking in Mumbai. The New York Times reported:
“We will see a tremendous jump in valuation in terms of the second tower,” said Pranav R. Bhakta, a consultant who helped Mr. Trump’s organization make inroads into the Indian market five years ago. “To say, ‘I have a Trump flat or residence’ — it’s president-elect branded. It’s that recall value. If they didn’t know Trump before, they definitely know him now.”
Somebody close to Trump must understand this isn’t a good look:
NPR
Kellyanne Conway, a Trump transition senior adviser, defended President-elect Donald Trump's handling of his business interests, telling NPR in an interview that concerns about the influence his children may have in mixing their roles and the Trump companies with advising their father are unfounded.
"They're going to support their father as president of the United States the way they've always supported his presidential candidacy, and they'll continue to be supportive at the same time," Conway, who served as Trump's campaign manager, told NPR's Audie Cornish in an interview Monday on All Things Considered. "They'll continue to be wildly successful in the business world."
The roles Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump play in the White House have come under scrutiny. The children were said to be set to run the Trump businesses through a "blind trust," but all three also serve on their father's transition team. Though a Trump lawyer referred to the setup of the children running the organization as a "blind trust," that's not the way one works.
BBC
President-elect Donald Trump says the US will quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on his first day in the White House.
He made the announcement in a video messageoutlining what he intends to do first when he takes office in January.
The TPP trade deal was signed by 12 countries which together cover 40% of the world's economy.
The Republican also pledged to reduce "job-killing restrictions" on coal production and stop visa abuses.
But there was no mention of repealing Obamacare or building a wall on the southern border with Mexico, two actions he said during the campaign he would do on day one.
His surprise election win two weeks ago has sparked protests across the US.
The TPP was agreed in 2015 by countries including Japan, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Mexico, but is not yet ratified.
Its aim was to deepen economic ties and boost growth but its opponents said it was negotiated in secret and it favours big corporations.
WORLD NEWS
DW News
The center-left Social Democrats insist they're not interested in a continuation of the current grand coalition in which they're junior partners to the conservatives, but they're refusing for the time being to put forward their own candidate for chancellor. That decision won't be made until January.
Still, the SPD is already beginning to strike a critical note toward Angela Merkel's announcement on Sunday that she would seek a fourth term in office. The campaign is clearly on.
"It was a pretty tepid appearance yesterday, and you have to say that she seems quite winded after 12 years," SPD secretary general Katarina Barley said at a party press conference on Monday. "Mrs. Merkel has no answers to the real problems facing our country, and the concrete things that this government has done for the people of Germany were often only possible because the SPD overcame bitter resistance from the conservatives."
The SPD contends that Angela Merkel's "myth of invincibility" is gone, but that claim will be hard to take at face value until someone gets the job of actually trying to beat her. SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel is the most likely candidate but he has relatively low personal popularity ratings. And European Parliamentary leader Martin Schulz - the only other politician often touted as a potential candidate - is hardly a household name in Germany.
Al Jazeera
British Prime Minister Theresa May has told business leaders in the UK that while leaving the European Union creates uncertainty in the market, there will also be opportunities for "dynamic trading agreements".
Speaking on Monday at the annual Confederation of British Industry conference in London, May said that the doors would be open to doing business with "old allies" in other parts of the world.
She also said that her government would invest an extra $2.5bn in science research and development by 2020, and committed to plans of the previous government to introduce a 17 percent rate for corporate tax - the lowest in the G20.
"Today, Britain has firms and researchers leading in some of the most exciting fields of human discovery," she said.
"We need to back them and turn research strengths into commercial success."
Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee, reporting from London, said that businesses are worried about the instability caused by the lack of knowledge as to what a "Brexit" - or Britain's departure from the EU - will actually look like.
Al Jazeera
Almost four decades since former Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat extended a hand of peace to Israel, the two governments have reached "full partnership and unbreakable alliance", analysts say.
Although many Egyptians continue to regard Israel as a threat and sympathise with the Palestinian cause, the relationship between the two countries has become markedly explicit under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
"Egyptian-Israeli relations are today at their highest level in history," Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), a research NGO, told Al Jazeera.
And it certainly appears so.
In 2016, Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a much-publicised meeting at the latter's home in Jerusalem. It was the first visit by any Egyptian FM in close to a decade. Netanyahu said the two "made time to watch the Euro 2016 final" football game together.
Egypt also reinstated an ambassador to Tel Aviv this year, following Morsi's decision to pull out the envoy in protest against the 2012 Israeli assault on Gaza.
Spiegel Online
It is the seventh day after Donald Trump's triumph, an election upset that set off a political earthquake around the world, and time for a visit with those far away from Washington who think like him. Members of France's Front National (FN) are meeting at the five-star Hotel Napoléon in Paris, not far from the Champs-Élysées.
The topics of discussion this evening include disadvantaged youth in the outer districts of the capital, known as the banlieues, and radical Islamists who are recruiting new members there. The mood is explosive in the banlieues, warns the speaker, a resolute blonde woman, who goes on to say it is a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment. "I am the only one who can defuse this bomb," she adds.
Her words are met with cheers and applause. Marine Le Pen has struck the right note, once again. Here, in the stuffy conference room at the Hotel Napoléon, people want to hear what they have long believed: That Islam constitutes a threat and that France's very future is on the line. Marine, the daughter of Front National co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been the head of her party for almost six years.
The Guardian
His first campaign during the Vancouver mayoral election hinged on a deceptively simple idea: housing is a human right. In 2008, as he stumped through this city of some 600,000 people Gregor Robertson vowed to boost affordable housing and end homelessness.
Eight years later, Robertson is into his third term as mayor. Housing remains one of the top issues facing the city, but the battle has been recast. No longer is Robertson simply fighting to keep the city’s most vulnerable off the streets, he’s part of a global cadre of mayors squaring off against superheated housing marketsto ensure that middle- and low-income earners have a place to call home.
The city’s struggle to inject affordability into a housing market that ranks as one of the world’s least affordable was laid bare last week, as Vancouver became the first jurisdiction in Canada to slap a tax on vacant homes.
“I wouldn’t have dreamed the crisis would get this intense, half a dozen years later,” Robertson told the Guardian in an interview at Vancouver’s city hall. “We’re dealing with global capital, national governments underinvesting in housing and provincial governments not doing enough. That leaves the cities dealing with chaos on our streets and people struggling to find a place to live.”
BBC
The number of people living under siege in Syria has doubled this year to almost one million, the UN says.
Emergency Relief Co-ordinator Stephen O'Brien said the figure had jumped from 486,700 to 974,080 in six months.
People were being "isolated, starved, bombed and denied medical attention and humanitarian assistance in order to force them to submit or flee," he said.
Mr O'Brien noted that the "deliberate tactic of cruelty" was mostly employed by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
"Those maintaining the sieges know by now that this Council is apparently unable or unwilling to enforce its will or agree now on steps to stop them," he told the UN Security Council.
Newly besieged locations include the rebel-held Damascus suburbs of Jobar, Hajar al-Aswad and Khan al-Shih, as well as several areas in the eastern Ghouta agricultural belt outside the capital.
THE ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE, HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
Climate Central (Nov. 20, 2016)
Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C, a goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change, would avoid economic losses by 2050 of $12 trillion, or around 10 percent of the world's GDP, compared to staying on the current track of at least 3°C of warming, the U.N. Development Programme said.
Sticking to the 1.5°C limit is feasible, it said in a report for the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of more than 40 countries most at risk from climate change.
"1.5°C has been a key call of vulnerable countries because it is only that level that will protect the survival of our people and environment," said Kare Debassa, Ethiopia's state minister for the environment, at U.N. climate talks in Morocco.
Meeting the goal would require cutting carbon emissions to zero by 2050, and a rapid transition to 100 percent renewable energy in the power sector, said the study.
If that transition happens, it would create 68 percent more energy-related jobs in 2030, and help provide clean power to the 1.1 billion people who lack electricity, bringing huge development benefits, it added.
The Paris Agreement, which has now been ratified by 110 countries, pledges to keep global warming "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial times and strive for a lower limit of 1.5°C.
The Guardian
Pope Francis has given all priests the power to forgive women who have had an abortion, saying the procedure was a “grave sin” but one that God’s mercy could wipe away for those with a repentant heart.
The move, announced in a letter to mark the end of the Vatican’s holy year of mercy, was a powerful reminder of Francis’s desire to focus his papacy on forgiveness, even as he faces an unprecedented backlash from traditionalists within the church who believe the he has gone too far on sensitive issues such as divorce, and now abortion.
Francis first opened the door for women who have had an abortion to be absolved by priests last year, in what was supposed to be a temporary measure during the year of mercy.
Traditionally, abortion was considered such a grave sin that only a bishop could absolve a repentant woman, or a priest given special permission by a bishop.
At the time, Francis defended his decision by focusing on the personal situations that force some women to get abortions, saying he was “well aware of the pressure that led them to this decision” and that it was an “existential and moral ordeal”.
Now, Francis has indefinitely extended priests’ right to grant forgiveness.
NPR
Every year when Morton Pollner had his checkup, he worried that doctors would find something on his lung. For years, they didn't. Then his luck ran out.
"My reaction was, 'Well, you smoked for 30 years. You got away with it for another 30 years and this is it.' I thought it was a death sentence," he says.
Pollner, who lives in Monroe, N.Y., was 76 when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Like many patients his age, he didn't expect there would be any effective treatment. Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in men and women. And it is mainly a disease of older people. Only about 2 percent of lung cancer patients are under 45 and the average age at diagnosis is about 70.
Older patients are frequently not offered curative treatment like surgery, because they and their families and even their doctors often think they won't be able to tolerate it. So they are referred for supportive care to control symptoms, rather than surgery to remove the cancer.
BuzzFeed News
Someone has found a novel way to black out negative comments about businesses online — file a lawsuit against a person who doesn’t exist.
The scheme relies on Google’s compliance with court orders to remove pages with defamatory content from its search results, said Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law. There is no reason for Google to question a state court order which has found a piece of content defamatory, he said.
Volokh told BuzzFeed News that he discovered 25 defamation cases against online commenters, all sharing similar structures and boilerplate legal language, and all filed without an attorney in state courts. In each case, the defendant — or at least someone claiming to be them — quickly agreed they had made a defamatory comment, allowing the court to issue a takedown order.
But in at least five of these cases, the person being sued didn’t even exist. In some cases, the plaintiff didn’t even know a suit was filed in their name, and countersued for damages to their reputation. But by obtaining a court document saying a comment is defamatory, the protagonists were able to get Google and other internet companies to scrub online criticism.
NPR
Some encouraging news in the battle against Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia: The rate at which older Americans are getting these conditions is declining. That's according to a study published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers say one reason for the improved outlook is an increase in education.
The study used data gathered in two snapshots, one in 2000 and another in 2012, that each looked at more than 10,000 Americans who were at least 65 years old. In the first snapshot, 11.6 percent of them had some form of dementia. In the second snapshot, it was 8.8 percent.
Put in more human terms, "that's well over a million people who don't have dementia, who would have had it if the rates had stayed the same as 2000 rates," says John Haaga, who directs the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging, which funded the study.
SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
BuzzFeed News
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman has been charged with a hit-and-run for driving his car in the wrong direction on a Southern California freeway in July, causing another driver to crash.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office filed four misdemeanor charges against Rodman, 55, on Monday. In addition to hit-and-run, the charges include driving without a valid license, giving false information to a police officer, and driving across a divider.
The incident happened in Santa Ana, California, on July 20 when Rodman was driving an SUV north in a southbound carpool lane on Interstate 5. Rodman allegedly drove directly at another car, forcing the driver to swerve and crash into a concrete dividing wall.